The people of Ontario have decided (by hypnosis?), or at least half of the province’s eligible voters did, and it’ll be 4 more years of Liberal government, with Dalton McGuinty at the helm.

Voters also decided to nix the electoral reform referendum question Mixed Member Proportional either out of ignorance, or confusion, or just because it plain wasn’t palatable.

I can’t say that I’m happy or sad over the reality… perhaps blas is the best word to describe how I feel over the election results. In terms of cartooning, the next four years of Dalton McGuinty should be as bountiful as the last four. In my mind the vote was not an endorsement of the McGuinty Liberals but a rejection of John Tory’s lame brain idea to introduce public funding for religious schools when there was no popular demand for such a thing in the first place. It only hijacked the campaign and overshadowed many more issues that deserved better discussion. Much damage could have been inflicted on the McGuinty Liberals by the PC’s by reminding voters of all the broken promises and dubious issuing of government grants from a secret slush fund. Hardly anything was brought up during the campaign regarding the ongoing mess between the Province and natives over the standoff at Caledonia. Even Howie Hampton’s attempt to remind voters of the $22,000 payraise didn’t stick to the Liberals.

Despite trying to appeal to voters as a renewed moderate party faith based funding of schools did the PC’s in. John Tory’s back tracking on the issue a week ago only made a mockery of the PC’s official election slogan for the campaign, “Leadership Matters“. By this past Thankgiving weekend, it was pretty clear that John Tory had become the turkey about to be carved. I think John Tory is a very smart man. He is a man of a lot of political backroom experience having served as a mandarin for Bill Davis and Brian Mulroney. He’s got great crudentials in law, business, and charitable organizations. On one hand he has what it takes to be a great premier, on the other he has a disasterous track record of defeat, such as losing this election, losing the Toronto Mayoral election against David Miller, and heading the horrible campaign of the federal PC’s in 1993 which resulted in a near wipe out of seats in the House of Commons. You’d think he’d learn by now but even in defeat the guy just doesn’t know when to quit: